I'm going to rely on the documentation that comes with my Bluray calibration discs like Spears and Munsil, that accompanies AVS709HD, and so forth. In my very brief testing of real material, I did find at least one occurrence of WTW in an actual movie; I stopped once I found it and didn't write it down, because I figured my references know what they're talking about, and therefore it wasn't a particularly notable finding. How much of it to preserve is also something the references I've cited discuss, and I touched on this by mentioning calibrating for peak vs. reference white.

I will rely on the specs, and every piece of mastered content I've ever seen, instead of a company that is selling just about the only product that does make use of below black and above-white information.

Quote:

Originally Posted by tima94930

If I understand your terms, I think we agree. In my long post a few messages back, I defined everything, described procedures, and exhaustively documented the behavior of the 4 possible combinations of dynamic range for my Nvidia card and TV. To summarize, the way I get the unadulterated video to the display with an Nvidia card using WMC with no codec packs and XBMC in DXVA2 mode so they're both using hardware acceleration is to use the Nvidia video dynamic range control panel setting, "Limited (16-235)". To view it properly, my Sony KDL-46HX850 needs to be in its corresponding "Limited" mode. Having both in Limited mode gives me results consistent with my Bluray player at its defaults. That's what I thoroughly documented in my long post, and I also discussed the compromise video dynamic range settings I need to select on the PC and the TV in order for video to be decently watchable (16-235 expanded to 0-255) while the desktop gets to use 0-255 as designed, and that is to put them both in their "Full" modes. Note that for the Nvidia card, "Limited" and "Full" apply only to the video dynamic range. The desktop is 0-255, which I guess is what you mean by "PC Levels". The TV doesn't distinguish desktop from video, so its Limited and Full modes affect everything it displays, and as I noted, the difference in my TV's modes is the level it treats as reference black at default brightness.

Your TV properly supports full range video - and in fact should request that by default. (most TVs still get sent 16-235 by default, and you have to force 0-255 out of the video card) You should be sending full range video to it.

Outputting limited range video from a PC is a compromise on image quality.

What it would appear that you are doing, is leaving the PC outputting full range 0-255 video over HDMI, and are setting the Video player levels to 16-235, then setting the display to 16-235.
That means the PC is still outputting 0-255, but video content is kept within 16-235, so desktop images will have everything below 16 and above 235 clipped for no good reason.

The only time you should ever do that is if your display does not support full range inputs, and you want to avoid compressing the full-range 0-255 PC output to 16-235 video levels, which can introduce banding.

Thanks for the link. I read some of it & will go back & re-read the whole thing.

My understanding is that the display eventually uses 0-255 colors, it just depends where these are converted or generated. Is that correct?

If the Blu-ray player outputs 16-236 then the TV would have to convert to 0-255. If that's correct then video 16 would get converted to PC 0 which is the blackest part of the test pattern displayed on a properly calibrated TV. Is that correct?

But if I slowly turn up the brightness on the TV then the B-T-B bar shows up. It was always there from the Blu-ray player, you just could not see it. Or so it seems. I keep coming back to how can the calibration disc have normal or regular black and B-T-B at the same level.

If there is no video below 16 coming out of the Blu-ray player where does the B-T-B come from?
I'm obviously not grasping some basic process.

Thanks for the link. I read some of it & will go back & re-read the whole thing.
My understanding is that the display eventually uses 0-255 colors, it just depends where these are converted or generated. Is that correct?
If the Blu-ray player outputs 16-236 then the TV would have to convert to 0-255. If that's correct then video 16 would get converted to PC 0 which is the blackest part of the test pattern displayed on a properly calibrated TV. Is that correct?
But if I slowly turn up the brightness on the TV then the B-T-B bar shows up. It was always there from the Blu-ray player, you just could not see it. Or so it seems. I keep coming back to how can the calibration disc have normal or regular black and B-T-B at the same level.
If there is no video below 16 coming out of the Blu-ray player where does the B-T-B come from?
I'm obviously not grasping some basic process.

If you are able to see below-black information from the player, it means the player is outputting a full range 0-255 signal, with the valid video information contained in the 16-235 portion.
With the display set to accept a video level input (16-235) this sets black at 16 and white at 235, though adjusting the brightness & contrast controls are then able to reveal the below-black (0-15) and above-white (236-255) information.

You can achieve this on a PC by doing the same thing - set the video card's output to 0-255, the video player's output to 16-235, and set the display to video levels. (16-235)
This will clip everything below 16 and above 235 on the display by default, but should be able to reveal below-black and above-white information, assuming the player you use is outputting it. (some players clip 0-15, and 236-255 if you set them to output 16-235)
This means there is a levels mis-match between the desktop and the video player though, as the desktop is outputting 0-255, so everything below 16 and above 235 will be clipped on the desktop.

What you should be doing, is having the player on the PC expand the levels from 16-235, to 0-255 by clipping the below-black and above-white information.
This way the video player's levels match the desktop's levels. (the desktop is always rendered at 0-255, no matter what)

You can then choose to either set the video card's output to 0-255, or 16-235.
Because PC content (the desktop, games etc.) is all rendered at 0-255 natively, there are actually 256 steps of information contained there. Video content only has 220 steps of information.
So if you set the video card to output 16-235, it has to compress the 0-255 signal to fit into 16-235, discarding 36 steps of gradation, reducing image quality.
If you set the PC to output 0-255, there is no levels conversion (other than expanding video from 16-235, to 0-255) and no quality loss.

You "lose" below-black and above-white information by doing this, but nothing outside of test-discs contains this information.
The argument I see against this is "well some discs have information in their specular highlights!" which: A) I have never seen substantiated, and B) doesn't matter, because they are specular highlights.
I have yet to personally find any commercial content that contains information above white.

Thanks for the link. I read some of it & will go back & re-read the whole thing.
My understanding is that the display eventually uses 0-255 colors, it just depends where these are converted or generated. Is that correct?
If the Blu-ray player outputs 16-236 then the TV would have to convert to 0-255. If that's correct then video 16 would get converted to PC 0 which is the blackest part of the test pattern displayed on a properly calibrated TV. Is that correct?
But if I slowly turn up the brightness on the TV then the B-T-B bar shows up. It was always there from the Blu-ray player, you just could not see it. Or so it seems. I keep coming back to how can the calibration disc have normal or regular black and B-T-B at the same level.
If there is no video below 16 coming out of the Blu-ray player where does the B-T-B come from?
I'm obviously not grasping some basic process.

BTB (0-15) and WTW (236-255) come from the content. On "normal" movies that data doesn't exist...however it does on calibration discs exactly for this testing and calibration.

If you set the PC to output 0-255, there is no levels conversion (other than expanding video from 16-235, to 0-255) and no quality loss.

This depends on how the conversion/expansion takes place and I think is the source of the confusion in the thread (and the general market). From what I've read thus far in the thread it appears as though many devices do things differently.

If a source (e.g. video card, player, etc.) does the conversion as "16 is the blackest and I will use that as the reference for 0-15; similarly 235 is the whitest and I will use that as the reference for 236-255" (effectively clipping BTB/WTW) then your quote above holds true. However, if the source does the conversion as "0 is the blackest and I will take 16 and reference it as 0; similarly 255 is the whitest and I will take 235 and reference it as 255" you are going to get a washed out image.

Perhaps it would be valuable to have a sticky post in the HTPC forum with per video card/player settings that ensure proper levels are being passed?

This depends on how the conversion/expansion takes place and I think is the source of the confusion in the thread (and the general market). From what I've read thus far in the thread it appears as though many devices do things differently.
If a source (e.g. video card, player, etc.) does the conversion as "16 is the blackest and I will use that as the reference for 0-15; similarly 235 is the whitest and I will use that as the reference for 236-255" (effectively clipping BTB/WTW) then your quote above holds true. However, if the source does the conversion as "0 is the blackest and I will take 16 and reference it as 0; similarly 255 is the whitest and I will take 235 and reference it as 255" you are going to get a washed out image.
Perhaps it would be valuable to have a sticky post in the HTPC forum with per video card/player settings that ensure proper levels are being passed?

There is only one way to expand levels from 16-235, to 0-255, which is to move 16 to 0, and 235 to 255, discarding all data outside the 16-235 range.

Level expansion should be a fairly simple operation to get right, and you are creating new steps of gradation, not removing them as you do when compressing from 0-255, to 16-235, so it shouldn't cause visual problems.
Of course using MadVR will do this with the highest precision to ensure that there is no banding introduced.

With Nvidia, this is set in the Nvidia control panel, under Video > Adjust video colour settings > Advanced

You want it set to "Full (0-255)" with the enhancement options disabled.

I'm not trying to be argumentative but I'm still not grasping something. And yes I've read the long posting several times. Please bear with me & follow this example.

Let’s say I play a calibration disc in my Blu-ray player & adjust my HDTV for proper black levels.

The video coming out of the Blu-ray player is 16-235 color. And it’s already been established that Video 16 equals PC 0. That means the blackest area on the TV is Video 16 or PC 0.

OK, so reference black as displayed by your TV is at RGB 16, period. Everything below that is being displayed as black.

Quote:

Now I increase the brightness on the TV. Now the Video 16 / PC 0 is displayed as dark gray. It’s not really dark gray coming out of the Blu-ray player, it’s the same PC=0 black that it was a minute ago. But now I also see a bar that is darker than the PC= 0. What is the level of this newly appearing darker bar that the Blu-ray player is outputting?

As far as I understand your terminology, it sounds like what I wrote, at least the part about bars becoming visible as brightness is increased:

Quote:

1. PC Limited, TV Limited
BTB, WTW present. All the bars contain the values they are labeled with, from 0-255.
TV treats 16 as black.
BTB not visible at defaults, but visible by increasing the brightness. OK per AVS and S&M.
WTW visible. OK per AVS and S&M.
BD player and PC agree.

What was happening in (1) is that increasing the TV brightness increased the brightness of the whole picture, so that reference black was shifted down to lower RGB levels, thus revealing more and more bars with labels 0-15. Since PC Limited passes 0-255 untouched, those pixel values actually appear in the PC's output and are visible when brightness is increased.

I can't answer your question because I don't know what RGB value the newly revealed bar contains. Apparently just the one bar became visible, and I don't know for sure what value it has, so for all I know, either (a) you meant to say multiple bars were revealed, making it like my Settings (1), or (b) that newly revealed bar has value 16, and blacks have been clipped below that, so you have no BTB.

That's why I suggested applying the procedures and using the terminology I established in my long post. Instead of talking about Video x and PC y, which I really am not 100% sure what that means, you could be saying things like, "When I played AVS709HD Black Clipping, I observed that bars below 17 were all invisible at default brightness. When I increased brightness, bars 1-16 became visible." Then I would know what you were talking about.

As for using a Bluray player as primary source, I have no way of determining the actual output pixel values for a Bluray player except to visually compare it to my PC. I can only tell you that my BD player at its defaults behaves exactly like my PC in "PC Limited, TV Limited" mode. Test videos like (say) AVS709HD Black Clipping have bars whose labels indicate their pixel values as encoded in the video; they are the "input pixels". When I play it on my PC, I can do the Paint.net thing and determine the values of the "output pixels", and that tells me what the Nvidia dynamic range setting is doing. To the extent I can match it to my BD player behavior, I can determine what the BD player is doing.

My HDTV has no setting for Limited or Full. Since it can display B-T-B I presume it's Full.

Quote:

Originally Posted by tima94930

OK, so reference black as displayed by your TV is at RGB 16, period. Everything below that is being displayed as black.

I’ve been thinking about this & believe it’s a matter of how I interpreted things.

I’ve been under the impression that Video 16 equals PC/RGB 0 in that they are both equally black. The reason is because I’ve seen it mentioned several times that they are the same. So to me that meant they have to be equally black.

I realize that PC has 256 shades of gray & Video has 220 shades. I figured the steps were just different sizes, sort of like a thermometer. 0 to 100 degrees Celsius is the same as 32 to 212 degrees Fahrenheit. And 0 C exactly equals 32 F.

I now believe that what people mean when they say PC 0-255 is converted to Video 16-235 & that PC 0 is the same as Video 16 is that they mean PC 0 is lightened up to make it equal to 16, and then it becomes Video color space. Just as you stated above. IOW they are not the same blackness but they represent the same thing. IOW a black cat is still the same black cat in both color spaces, but they are not the same blackness on the TV.

My HDTV has no setting for Limited or Full. Since it can display B-T-B I presume it's Full.

What this likely means is that it treats inputs as video-level signals, but does not "hard clip" values outside of 16-235, so that they can be revealed if you adjust the brightness & contrast controls.

On some displays, this essentially lets you use them with full-range PC-level signals (0-255) but on others, while you are able to see some levels outside of the 16-235 range, they may not be displayed correctly.
They might look fine with a test pattern showing flashing bars below black and above white, but might not look good when you hook up a PC to it.

Other displays will only show video levels, and have a hard clip to the 16-235 range, so that no matter how much you adjust brightness/contrast, you will never see below-black or above-white information. (this is rare now though)

Ideally your display will just have a toggle to switch between PC or Video (full or limited) range inputs. The advantage here, is that the display simply changes what it maps black and white to (video levels, 16 & 235, PC levels, 0 & 255) which means that you don't have to change your brightness & contrast settings. So if 50 was the correct setting for a video-level source, it would be the correct setting for a PC-level source as well, unlike a display which only supports video levels, but can show the full range if you adjust the brightness control by raising it from 50 to 66 for example.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mike99

I’ve been under the impression that Video 16 equals PC/RGB 0 in that they are both equally black. The reason is because I’ve seen it mentioned several times that they are the same. So to me that meant they have to be equally black.

When you send a PC-level signal to a PC-level display, and when you send a Video-level signal to a video-level display, black will be equally black.
If you send a video-level signal (16-235) to a display set up to show PC levels though (0-255) the black level will be raised, because it is 16 steps above black (6% grey) and the image will look washed out.
If you send a PC-level signal (0-255) to a display set up to show Video levels (16-235) the image will look very dark and contrasted, because the lower 16 steps are being discarded by the display, because they are below black. (16)

As long as you are matching levels correctly (input levels match output levels) the picture should look identical whether you send PC or Video levels, as video is natively 16-235.

With a PC as your source though, it is natively 0-255, so if you are outputting Video levels from a PC device, you are compressing 0-255 down to 16-235, and discarding steps of gradation. (256 > 220)
This won't affect video playback because it natively only has 220 steps, but affects everything else you do on the PC.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mike99

I realize that PC has 256 shades of gray & Video has 220 shades. I figured the steps were just different sizes, sort of like a thermometer. 0 to 100 degrees Celsius is the same as 32 to 212 degrees Fahrenheit. And 0 C exactly equals 32 F.
I now believe that what people mean when they say PC 0-255 is converted to Video 16-235 & that PC 0 is the same as Video 16 is that they mean PC 0 is lightened up to make it equal to 16, and then it becomes Video color space. Just as you stated above. IOW they are not the same blackness but they represent the same thing. IOW a black cat is still the same black cat in both color spaces, but they are not the same blackness on the TV.
Does that explanation of what I thought make sense?

There is no difference with the scale, it's literally just that video levels is a limited section of the full 8-bit RGB scale.

Full range 0-255 PC levels up top, Limited range 16-235 below.

If below-black, and above-white information are present in a video-level signal, it means the device is outputting the full 0-255 range, but it gets treated as if it were a video level signal.
So black is at 16, and white is at 235, but if you adjust the brightness & contrast, you are able to reveal the information in the 0-15 below black range, and the 236-255 above white range.

Thanks for posting those gray scale images. My initial interpretation was that the lowest black in the top scale was the same as the lowest black in the bottom scale. Again because I've seen comments that Video 16 was the same as PC 0. Obviously those comments were incorrect & led me down a wrong path.

I'll have to read all the information a couple times to make sure I grasp everything.

My HDTV has no setting for Limited or Full. Since it can display B-T-B I presume it's Full.

It's going to depend on how you define what "Full" means. As I documented, Nvidia's idea of "Full" doesn't pass BTB and instead maps values 0-15 to 0. OTOH, my TV can display 0-15 in both its "Full" and "Limited" modes, and the only difference I can see between TV Full and TV Limited is the level the TV considers reference black. So without defining what you mean by "Full", it's an improper term to use.

Quote:

I’ve been thinking about this & believe it’s a matter of how I interpreted things.

I’ve been under the impression that Video 16 equals PC/RGB 0 in that they are both equally black. The reason is because I’ve seen it mentioned several times that they are the same. So to me that meant they have to be equally black.

Their blackness depends on the RGB value the display treats as reference black, which is controlled to some extent by the brightness setting.

Quote:

I now believe that what people mean when they say PC 0-255 is converted to Video 16-235 & that PC 0 is the same as Video 16 is that they mean PC 0 is lightened up to make it equal to 16, and then it becomes Video color space. Just as you stated above.

I'm not sure I stated that. In what I did talk about in my long message, I made a point that 0-255 is not being "squished" into 16-235, but the opposite is happening, and that 16-235 is being expanded to 0-255; see that message to get the proper context for that statement.

Quote:

IOW they are not the same blackness but they represent the same thing. IOW a black cat is still the same black cat in both color spaces, but they are not the same blackness on the TV.

Does that explanation of what I thought make sense?

I think you're just getting hung up on the reference black concept. It's pretty simple. For video, RGB 16 is reference black. For non-video, RGB 0 is reference black.

It's going to depend on how you define what "Full" means. As I documented, Nvidia's idea of "Full" doesn't pass BTB and instead maps values 0-15 to 0. OTOH, my TV can display 0-15 in both its "Full" and "Limited" modes, and the only difference I can see between TV Full and TV Limited is the level the TV considers reference black.

Nothing can display below-black or above-white information when outputting PC levels, because you can't have negative RGB values, or values above 255.

Nvidia maps 16 (video black) to 0, and 235 (video white) to 255, when you set them to "Full (0-255)" output for video playback, which is exactly what they are supposed to do.

As I have mentioned many times now, valid video ranges from 16-235. Anything outside of that range is not supposed to be there in mastered content, you should only ever find it in test discs, and those patterns on test discs are largely irrelevant with today's displays.

My HDTV has no setting for Limited or Full. Since it can display B-T-B I presume it's Full.

It's going to depend on how you define what "Full" means. As I documented, Nvidia's idea of "Full" doesn't pass BTB and instead maps values 0-15 to 0. OTOH, my TV can display 0-15 in both its "Full" and "Limited" modes, and the only difference I can see between TV Full and TV Limited is the level the TV considers reference black. So without defining what you mean by "Full", it's an improper term to use.

Nothing can display below-black or above-white information when outputting PC levels, because you can't have negative RGB values, or values above 255.

Well, yeah, but what has that got to do with the definition of the term "Full" as used by the guy I was responding to? It doesn't have anything to do with what I said to him or anything I've said for that matter. It sheds zero light on what his TV is doing, and he was talking about his TV, and I was asking about his TV. If you read what I wrote, to him as well as in my long message from a couple of days ago, the fact that a TV "can display BTB" is not sufficient to characterize what it's doing; in particular, for my TV, it is not sufficient to distinguish the HDMI Dynamic Range modes "Full" and "Limited". Hence, my (repeated) plea to get him to speak more precisely, like I did in my long post and have tried to maintain ever since.

Quote:

Nvidia maps 16 (video black) to 0, and 235 (video white) to 255, when you set them to "Full (0-255)" output for video playback, which is exactly what they are supposed to do.

Yes, that's exactly what I've said several times by now, and I've said nothing inconsistent with it; in fact, in my long post, I made a point that "PC Full has to do what it does to the pixels so that they will display correctly on a TV Full device, which treats 0 as black and 255 as white," and of course, I defined those terms and what "PC Full does" in that post. Do you have a point that you're trying to make?

Quote:

As I have mentioned many times now, valid video ranges from 16-235. Anything outside of that range is not supposed to be there in mastered content, you should only ever find it in test discs, and those patterns on test discs are largely irrelevant with today's displays.

as if there were some other way of doing things. I'm not sure what else you could have meant by that.

It's not Nvidia's "idea" to not pass below-black information with PC-level outputs, it's not possible to do so.

You then go on to say:

Quote:

Originally Posted by tima94930

OTOH, my TV can display 0-15 in both its "Full" and "Limited" modes

Which implies that your TV is displaying below-black information whether you are sending it a PC or Video-level signal. I reiterate; it is not possible to display below-black information with a PC-level output.

If what you meant to say there, was that your display is capable of displaying below-black information when sent a Video-level input that contains below-black information, well, you weren't very clear about it.

I feel like all these long posts are complicating matters.

With a HTPC using an Nvidia card, you should set the driver's video colour setting to "Full (0-255)" regardless of what your display supports, as that maps the video's 16-235 levels to the PC's 0-255 range.

The PC's output is then either sent as untouched 0-255 if you have a display which supports PC-level inputs, or is compressed to 16-235 if your display only supports video-level inputs.

By default, the card will send 16-235 over HDMI unless the TV specifically reports that it supports 0-255 PC-level inputs. (even if they do support PC-level inputs, many TVs don't seem to do this)
If your TV accepts PC-level inputs, but the card is only sending a video-level signal (the image will look washed out when set for a PC-level input) you can force the graphics card to output a full-range signal if necessary. (there are utilities to do this)

as if there were some other way of doing things. I'm not sure what else you could have meant by that.

It's not Nvidia's "idea" to not pass below-black information with PC-level outputs, it's not possible to do so.

You then go on to say:

Quote:

Originally Posted by tima94930

OTOH, my TV can display 0-15 in both its "Full" and "Limited" modes

Which implies that your TV is displaying below-black information whether you are sending it a PC or Video-level signal. I reiterate; it is not possible to display below-black information with a PC-level output.

If what you meant to say there, was that your display is capable of displaying below-black information when sent a Video-level input that contains below-black information, well, you weren't very clear about it.

I give up. You're reading things into what I say that aren't there, and you aren't understanding what is there. I don't see anything I can do to improve that situation.

Quote:

I feel like all these long posts are complicating matters.

Actually, the exact opposite is true when terms are defined, equipment is defined, procedures are defined, and test material is defined with some rigor, like I did in my post.

Quote:

With a HTPC using an Nvidia card, you should set the driver's video colour setting to "Full (0-255)" regardless of what your display supports, as that maps the video's 16-235 levels to the PC's 0-255 range.

The PC's output is then either sent as untouched 0-255 if you have a display which supports PC-level inputs, or is compressed to 16-235 if your display only supports video-level inputs.

By default, the card will send 16-235 over HDMI unless the TV specifically reports that it supports 0-255 PC-level inputs. (even if they do support PC-level inputs, many TVs don't seem to do this)
If your TV accepts PC-level inputs, but the card is only sending a video-level signal (the image will look washed out when set for a PC-level input) you can force the graphics card to output a full-range signal if necessary. (there are utilities to do this)

All I can say is go read my long post, and you will then have an example of how a specific Nvidia card and TV behave over the four possible combinations of their respective dynamic range settings. I'm not interesting in carrying on the discussion you seem to want to have, because it's just like the discussions I've seen in countless threads like this one, which can end up with hundreds of posts with people arguing about generalities. I think my approach is a better basis for a productive discussion. The procedures I've described can be carried out easily by anyone for free, and they will tell you what is actually happening. I specifically addressed why setting both my GT430 and TV to their respective Limited modes is the way to go, and I explained the one reason I saw that I might want to set them both to Full. As for what you're saying about the TV determining what the card does by default, I didn't examine that, and it doesn't really interest me, as it just complicates the discussion. I set both card and TV to known dynamic ranges to determine what they were doing, and I examined what happened for all four possibilities.

Quick note I haven't seen mentioned in this thread re: NVIDIA cards. I use an NVIDIA card connected via HDMI to my Samsung ES8000 LED TV. I used the toggle program to set my NVIDIA card to "Full 0-255". One thing I noticed when I was calibrating my TV with a meter via test patterns shown on HTPC is that when NVIDIA is connected over HDMI and set to Limited 15-235, the output is Gamma=2.2. If you set your NVIDIA card to Full 0-255, output is Gamma=2.5.

So for anyone using the tweak to get NVIDIA to output RGB Full 0-255 over HDMI, make sure you are also adjusting for the change in gamma when you calibrate your display.

Quick note I haven't seen mentioned in this thread re: NVIDIA cards. I use an NVIDIA card connected via HDMI to my Samsung ES8000 LED TV. I used the toggle program to set my NVIDIA card to "Full 0-255". One thing I noticed when I was calibrating my TV with a meter via test patterns shown on HTPC is that when NVIDIA is connected over HDMI and set to Limited 15-235, the output is Gamma=2.2. If you set your NVIDIA card to Full 0-255, output is Gamma=2.5.

So for anyone using the tweak to get NVIDIA to output RGB Full 0-255 over HDMI, make sure you are also adjusting for the change in gamma when you calibrate your display.

That sounds like your display is not properly configured, or does not support 0-255 correctly. (e.g. outputting 0-255 and adjusting brightness/contrast to see all levels, rather than having a levels option)

There should be no difference between proper 16-235 and 0-255 support, just improved gradation.

Hi everyone, I'm really interested in this conversation because my main video source when I move in a couple of months will be my HTPC (nVidia GT430) connected to my Panasonic P50ST50B plasma.

As I understand it, the ideal situation is to output 0-255 to the display, with video levels being expanded to 0-255 on the way. This means the desktop is displayed as-is and video is displayed correctly. However, this requires using a high quality renderer like MadVR to avoid banding in the expansion of the video from 16-235 to 0-255. Unfortunately, I'll be stuck with EVR, which is pretty bad at this expansion. In this case, I think I'm better off outputting 16-235 to the display, with video levels being untouched. This should result in the desktop being compressed to 16-235 (might introduce banding but avoids clipping) but video being output natively at 16-235, which should avoid banding in the video - the most important thing after all!

Not sure whether outputting YCbCr or RGB is better though. The display doesn't pass through full 4:4:4 but I'm guessing the TV would be better at YCbCr-to-RGB conversion than the nVidia GPU is?

Using the latest GeForce drivers on my gt640, the only way that I can output FULL 0-255 through mediaportal is by using the following steps:

1) MOST IMPORTANTLY! You must Edit the registry using one of the setRGB tools, otherwise nvidia will do unnecessary level conversions!

2) Set LAV to output ONLY RGB32 (untick everything else) and set the output conversion levels to 'untouched (as input)'
3) In NVIDIA control panel --> adjust desktop settings --> set digital colour format to RGB, and set content type reported to display as 'Desktop programs'
4) NVIDIA control panel --> adjust video colour settings --> set 'how do you make colour adjustments' to programs control colour

I have my HTPC outputting 0-255 and LAV Filters set to output RGB24/32 with TV levels. This lets me see BTB and WTW, so I can calibrate properly. I've set brightness so that I can just about see black 17, but I can always see all whites up to 255 no matter what I set the contrast to. What do I do about that? Also, how am I supposed to calibrate gamma? Lagom has some gamma ramps but I can't find any video equivalents that I can use. Lastly, I'm sure the banding has gotten worse since I've set up my HTPC like this....so maybe it's actually still outputting 16-235 and compressing video levels beyond this. I can't see any way to find out whether the input is 0-255 or 16-235 on my Panasonic P50ST50.

seems like i spent 2 years buffering this one out. so... here is my input. so far i found reviews to favor samsungs hdtvs attached to pc's. now don't hold it against me if i am wrong. though any other tv could have a nich of nice compatible settings, as our old slandered def Toshiba 50inch was plug and play like a ctr. now what i get is we all have issues hdmi wise. amd can't cut it, my moms laptop suffered and it was not a hdtv display, but hence they all do and do i need to mention the late issues amd faces.(ouch they hurt) by the way nvidia wont fix this by all means, those who have dealt with the amd solution can relate maybe forgiving nvidia. well don't by all means use limited i tried makes a bloom effect. dark's to dark, light too light. shall i reiterate full rgb. let me lay down the steps:(i have a un40eh6000f samsung)

2.pc mode with 4:4:4 no matter what(on samsung disables dimming of back light)also brings out detail

3.get tv settings good(don't mind washed out) fiddling with the digital vibrance can work wonders for washed out color. if you can't get saturated enough for the desktop color try downloading a secondary display programer, i bet there are some good ones. just haven't looked, but... your hdtv might not be as piano black as you think.(LCD monitor test imageshttp://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/)

4.set gamma on tv settings(for samsung so far i have -3{seems best but the 2 brightest whites still clip, down from 3})http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/

5.open nvidia control panel(call me nuts) but set video color settings full. looks washed out huh well bump up the saturation. it can be done within video codecs or players if you wish or need to do it that way.

6. games can be modded to satisfaction.

7.but will us pc goers ever avoid clipping. i know it's sad.

now i been on my buddies laptop and mine and notice brights are bloomy and dark's are to vibrant but you

get used too it(or is it my galaxy 670 4gb vram card).

by all means the above pc is how my desktop space and internet and windows feel for bloom. technically my pics look fine. i found this on google to reference

if it's on his laptop with the screen that came with it might denote the problem can be in all pc's. pictures and movies and games(more then most games) are fine. it is just windows in general and it might be a set back not discussed or seen by many or Microsoft. i have another post mentioning more on this. and so i think i was reading it could be my beefy glasses too. oh well i am not paying a grand for a real monitor that is refurbished or 2 grand for a new one.

remember i mentioned i spent 2 years letting this eat me as i tried to escape. well my un40eh6000f samsung can't be much better go look over at the official page and you will see the panel lotto. hence i got mine from

J & R and lucked out

very very little to no vignetting

perfect plasma blacks

perfect uniformity blacks and whites

large view angle

so i lucked out the rest is what samsung expected and is normal for the tv

the only problem is when i upgraded the firmware, yes it helped better the picture, but blew the contrast too high. bummer. i would like to go back and see if it was better: funny thing if you have older firmware samsung will let you install a downgrade.(i need help finding that) bet they knew that they screwed up and didn't know if any firmware was gonna take a liking. well i haven't finished fine tuning my tv,but it's wounder years ahead of what it was jus need to top it off with a little loving and get the nvidia panel tuned in to my liking(as everything is grayed out on my tv that i want to change and left to the vid card to decide).